EX-ESM CHAIRMAN TO GIVE UP $7.5 MILLION

The former chairman of failed ESM Government Securities Inc. of Fort Lauderdale has agreed to relinquish $7.5 million in assets to a bankruptcy court trustee, according to documents filed in federal court here Monday.

Ron Ewton, the former board chairman of ESM and a business associate of Warner's, agreed to give the assets to ESM trustee Thomas Tew as partial payment on the $15.5 million in loans Ewton received from the insolvent company.

If U.S. District Judge Jose A. Gonzalez Jr. approves the settlement, the trustee will receive a partnership in the Tampa Bay Bandits; three farms in Lake Worth, Greenwich, Conn., and Aiken, S.C.; horses; a yacht slip ; personal accounts with financial institutions and a stock brokerage; interest in 14 firms, and a $400,000 certificate of deposit.

But Ewton and his wife, Jerilyn, will retain his residence in Boca Raton's exclusive Sanctuary neighborhood, home furnishings, jewelry, a 1984 Cadillac and $475,000 under the proposed agreement.

The returned assets may ultimately be available for distribution among the creditors of ESM, who were defrauded, according to the SEC, out of some $320 million more than ESM can pay.

Earlier Monday, in Fort Lauderdale federal court, Warner objected to the SEC request for his financial records relating to an Antigua bank, a Swiss bank account, and other matters.

Warner, who had $4.85 million transferred out of his personal account at ESM a month before the company collapsed in March, traveled to Antigua and Switzerland this year, according to the SEC.

Warner's attorney, Hugo L. Black Jr. of Miami, noted that Warner told the SEC that he did not transfer any assets out of the country after ESM closed.

Warner has shown the SEC 40,000 documents and has undergone six days of SEC interrogation, Black wrote.

"The SEC investigation has developed facts that tend to show to any fair- minded person," Black wrote, "that Mr. Warner never, at any time, possessed any ownership interest in or control over ESM, never, at any time, consciously shared in any of the proceeds of the looting of ESM by its principals, and never knew of the true financial condition of ESM until the very eve of ESM's financial collapse."

Black, however, opposes the SEC motion to open Warner's financial records dating after ESM's March 4 closing.